キャミー・タング著「戌年」連載小説 プロのドッグトレーナーであるマリ・ムトウは、厄年を迎えている。 犬小屋と訓練所の改築をしながら、いつも不服そうにしている家族と同居することになった。母と姉に言わせれば、犬の毛とよだれかけにまみれる仕事は、家族にとって恥ずべきものだという。彼女は元カレを説得し、数ヶ月間犬を預かってもらうことにした。しかし、彼の兄は、数週間前に彼女が誤って車に追突した、怒り狂ったセキュリティ専門家であることが判明する。 アシュウィン・ケイトウは十分な問題を抱えている。叔母が玄関先に現れ、同居を希望している。彼は彼女にすべてを借りているので、断ることができません。母親が家を出て行った後、ネルおばさんはアシュウィンと弟を引き取り、愛のあるキリスト教の家庭で育てた。しかも、弟のダスティもアパートを追い出され、居場所を求めている。しかし、彼は犬を飼っている。そして、その犬の飼い主は誰だと思いますか? しかし、旧友でオアフ島のノースショアでデイスパを経営する私立探偵のエディサ・ゲレロから依頼を受ける。マリの施設で奇妙な破壊行為があり、3年前に失踪したエディサの妹の財布を発見する。エディサはマリが危険な目に遭っているのではと心配する。警備の専門家であるアシュウィンがすでにマリを知っていることを知ったエディサは、忙しい若い女性を密かに監視することを彼に依頼する。 アシュウィンは、活発でのんびりとしたドッグトレーナーに不本意ながら惹かれていく。彼女は、幸せそうな母親を思い出させる。その母親の裏切りによって、彼は人と距離を置くようになったのだ。マリは、アシュウィンの冷たい外見を見抜き、彼が家族に忠実な男であることを認める。彼は、彼女のキャリア選択を批判するだけの母親や姉とは違う。 マリのバラバラな家庭とアシュウィンのバラバラな家庭の中で、過去を隠そうとする人たちから、彼らの周りに危険が迫ってくるようになる。彼らは、影で動く秘密に光を当てることができるのか? 過去に発表されたパートへのリンクはこちら。 *** 第8章 - 恐ろしくも真っ白な不動産書類 『みんな仲良くできないのかな?』 マリは無用に力を込めて箱に本を投げ入れた。最近、なぜ彼女は人生の中で全員と言い争いをしているのだろう?もしかすると、これは本当に悪いアイデア
Camy here: Here's another book I added to my Street Team book giveaway list! You can win this book by joining my Street Team--Click here for more info!
The Heiress by Susan May Warren
They can buy anything they want—fame, power, beauty, even loyalty. But they can’t buy love.
The beautiful and wealthy heiress daughters of August Price can buy everything their hearts desire. But what if their desire is to be loved, without an enormous price tag attached? When one sister betrays another for the sake of love, will she find happiness? And what happens when the other sets out across the still untamed frontier to find it—will she discover she’s left it behind in the glamorous world of the New York gilded society? What price will each woman pay for being an heiress?
Set in the opulent world of the Gilded Age, two women discover that being an heiress just might cost them everything they love.
Excerpt of Chapter One:
Heiress Part 1: Sisters
New York City, 1896
Chapter 1
With the wrong smile, her sister could destroy Jinx’s world.
“Loosen your breath, Esme, and the lacing will go easier.” Jinx sat on the ottoman,
watching Bette pull the stays of Esme’s new corset as her sister hung onto the lacing bar.
The corset, silk damask with embroidered tea roses, pale pink ribbons along the heart-shaped
bust line and a polished brass busk, had arrived only yesterday in a shipment from Worth’s of
Paris.
Esme didn’t deserve something so beautiful, not with her gigantic twenty-one-inch waist,
the way she fought the corsetiere during the fitting, and now held her breath instead of exhaling
to lose yet another half-inch.
Jinx, still in her training corset, had long ago shaved her torso down to eighteen inches.
She deserved a damask corset, in the new S-shaped style, the way it erected the posture,
protruded her hips, and forced her body into the elegant shape of a society woman. But her
corset wouldn’t arrive until her mother ordered her debut trousseau, hopefully after the end of
this year’s society season. After all, she’d already turned seventeen, would be eighteen when the
season started next November.
She should have been born first.
Esme closed her eyes, as if in pain. “Mother, I can’t breathe. I will faint during the
quadrille.”
“Perhaps you will be recovered by someone of significance.” Phoebe sat on a gold-foiled
Marie Antoinette chair, the red plush velvet like a throne as she perched upon it, surveying her
eldest daughter’s preparations. “It wouldn’t hurt your attention to be found swooning during a
waltz into the arms of the Astor heir.”
Esme made a face. “More likely, I’ll find myself discarded in the sitting room, one of
the Astor’s maids fanning me to consciousness. Please, Bette, that is enough.” She released the
lacing bar, letting her arms fall, and cast a look at their mother, who assented with a flick of her
hand.
Jinx bit back a huff of disgust. It simply wasn’t fair that, despite Esme’s almost militant
repulsion to securing a husband, men lined up to call on her during her at-home days, appeared
after church to walk her home, vied to be seated beside her at dinner parties, and begged her to
partner with them in golf and tennis. Most of all, they bedecked her with bouquets of dark red
Jacqueminot roses or deep pink Boneselline rosebuds before every ball.
Jinx blamed Esme’s exquisite beauty—her straw-blonde hair, too-blue eyes, a form that
frankly, needed no corset to enhance—because Esme had interest in none of her suitors, despite
their pedigrees. Worse, her sister almost purposely confused the etiquette of dinner, refused the
language of the fan, and occasionally wandered out onto some dark balcony to view the stars
while the after-dinner German was called, leaving her suitors with no one to present their flowers
or party gifts to. Jinx had no doubt her sister wouldn’t hesitate to attend Caroline Astor’s January
ball with her uncorseted body loose in a tea dress, while she pressed her nose into some dime
novel.
God had been so unfair.
As if Esme could read Jinx’s thoughts, she turned to her mother, even as Bette followed
her to fasten her stays. “Really, Mother, are you sure I must attend tonight’s ball? I’m exhausted.
Tea today at the Wilson’s, and last night dinner at the Fish’s and the Opera the night before? I
am simply wasted to the bone—”
The Heiress by Susan May Warren
They can buy anything they want—fame, power, beauty, even loyalty. But they can’t buy love.
The beautiful and wealthy heiress daughters of August Price can buy everything their hearts desire. But what if their desire is to be loved, without an enormous price tag attached? When one sister betrays another for the sake of love, will she find happiness? And what happens when the other sets out across the still untamed frontier to find it—will she discover she’s left it behind in the glamorous world of the New York gilded society? What price will each woman pay for being an heiress?
Set in the opulent world of the Gilded Age, two women discover that being an heiress just might cost them everything they love.
Excerpt of Chapter One:
Heiress Part 1: Sisters
New York City, 1896
Chapter 1
With the wrong smile, her sister could destroy Jinx’s world.
“Loosen your breath, Esme, and the lacing will go easier.” Jinx sat on the ottoman,
watching Bette pull the stays of Esme’s new corset as her sister hung onto the lacing bar.
The corset, silk damask with embroidered tea roses, pale pink ribbons along the heart-shaped
bust line and a polished brass busk, had arrived only yesterday in a shipment from Worth’s of
Paris.
Esme didn’t deserve something so beautiful, not with her gigantic twenty-one-inch waist,
the way she fought the corsetiere during the fitting, and now held her breath instead of exhaling
to lose yet another half-inch.
Jinx, still in her training corset, had long ago shaved her torso down to eighteen inches.
She deserved a damask corset, in the new S-shaped style, the way it erected the posture,
protruded her hips, and forced her body into the elegant shape of a society woman. But her
corset wouldn’t arrive until her mother ordered her debut trousseau, hopefully after the end of
this year’s society season. After all, she’d already turned seventeen, would be eighteen when the
season started next November.
She should have been born first.
Esme closed her eyes, as if in pain. “Mother, I can’t breathe. I will faint during the
quadrille.”
“Perhaps you will be recovered by someone of significance.” Phoebe sat on a gold-foiled
Marie Antoinette chair, the red plush velvet like a throne as she perched upon it, surveying her
eldest daughter’s preparations. “It wouldn’t hurt your attention to be found swooning during a
waltz into the arms of the Astor heir.”
Esme made a face. “More likely, I’ll find myself discarded in the sitting room, one of
the Astor’s maids fanning me to consciousness. Please, Bette, that is enough.” She released the
lacing bar, letting her arms fall, and cast a look at their mother, who assented with a flick of her
hand.
Jinx bit back a huff of disgust. It simply wasn’t fair that, despite Esme’s almost militant
repulsion to securing a husband, men lined up to call on her during her at-home days, appeared
after church to walk her home, vied to be seated beside her at dinner parties, and begged her to
partner with them in golf and tennis. Most of all, they bedecked her with bouquets of dark red
Jacqueminot roses or deep pink Boneselline rosebuds before every ball.
Jinx blamed Esme’s exquisite beauty—her straw-blonde hair, too-blue eyes, a form that
frankly, needed no corset to enhance—because Esme had interest in none of her suitors, despite
their pedigrees. Worse, her sister almost purposely confused the etiquette of dinner, refused the
language of the fan, and occasionally wandered out onto some dark balcony to view the stars
while the after-dinner German was called, leaving her suitors with no one to present their flowers
or party gifts to. Jinx had no doubt her sister wouldn’t hesitate to attend Caroline Astor’s January
ball with her uncorseted body loose in a tea dress, while she pressed her nose into some dime
novel.
God had been so unfair.
As if Esme could read Jinx’s thoughts, she turned to her mother, even as Bette followed
her to fasten her stays. “Really, Mother, are you sure I must attend tonight’s ball? I’m exhausted.
Tea today at the Wilson’s, and last night dinner at the Fish’s and the Opera the night before? I
am simply wasted to the bone—”
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